Helping our kids thrive is a shared responsibility – we can better meet it with improved leave for infant care
Taking care of our kids is one of society’s most important shared responsibilities. Whether or not we’re parents, we’re all caregivers as citizens. Standing behind adequate and inclusive supports for parents is one way we can each do our part to help our youngest citizens thrive, and ensure that every family has what they need to secure the best possible outcomes for their children.
Canada’s commitment to affordable $10 a day child care is a critical milestone that should be celebrated – even though it’s rolling out far too slowly. But other big gaps in supports for families remain. Especially when it comes to parental time at home with newborns.
Gen Squeeze and UNICEF Canada are asking governments to take the steps needed to ensure parents have enough time to care at home following the birth or adoption of a child. This is one key action we need to deliver solutions for Canadian families. Failing to deliver these supports helps put up to 1/3 of kids at risk for starting school in ways that mean they’re more likely to fail, go to jail, or wind up sick as adults. As UNICEF Canada puts it in a recently released report:
“Every child begins life full of potential, but without the right policies in the early years this potential is eroded. For individual children and their families this loss of potential is a tragedy; for society it is catastrophic. Early moments matter and depend on inclusive and adequate ‘family-friendly’ policy support including income, childcare and parental leave. Every family deserves the time to care for their newborns. Every child has the right to care.”
Now is the time to level-up our approach, and seize the opportunity to capitalize on the many benefits parental leave delivers – like enhancing breastfeeding, vaccination rates, and mental health – and reducing risks of preterm birth, infant mortality, family violence and toxic stress.
A universal infant benefit – not an employment support
Canadians have legal rights to unpaid parental leave, but only employed parents who meet specific eligibility criteria can receive paid parental leave. These criteria tend to privilege families with stable employment, and higher incomes. The result?
About 1/3 of infants don’t have access to the protection of paid time with a parent during this critical time of life. This includes around 60% of low-income parents and 40% of Indigenous parents.
One big reason why so many kids are left out is that parental leave is part of our Employment Insurance (EI) system – where it isn’t a good fit. EI is designed to shore up income when jobs are lost or disrupted. Parental leave is about our collective responsibility for social care, supporting parents to raise future generations of workers, volunteers and citizens on whom we will all rely.
Support for kids shouldn’t be contingent on the employment status of their parents – it should be universal. Relocating parental leave outside of EI will better brand it as a social protection and care policy for all kids – not as an employment-related support.
To advance this aim, UNICEF Canada recommends that every infant is guaranteed a minimum of 6 months of adequately paid, protected time. That would be a good start – one we can build on til Canada reaches 12 months of guaranteed, adequately paid, leave time.
Getting our kids off to the best start in life means avoiding the lifelong effects of poverty
The cash benefits available to parents on leave must be high enough to prevent families from falling into poverty. This is especially important during critical early years, when the prevalence of poverty is already high, and can yield lifelong effects. Immediately increasing the benefits delivered to families will mean that parents can genuinely afford to forgo wages and take the leave time needed to care for newborns – important social care work from which we all benefit.
UNICEF Canada recommends that the 6 months of universal parental leave for which they are calling should be delivered such that parents receive the equivalent of Canada’s median annual family income. At present, EI-based parental leave replaces only 55% of weekly earnings for up to 12 months – falling to 33% for leave between 12-18 months. On average, a mother who takes parental leave collects just $20,000 – and many parents collect far less. This leaves too many families far below the poverty line.
So long as parental leave remains under EI, both the minimum and the maximum benefits must be raised. Gen Squeeze has specific proposals for new benefit thresholds that will keep families from slipping into poverty. It will also level-up Canada’s performance on the global stage. Across the OECD, 29 countries have more generous parental leave benefits than Canada, and both the International Labour Organization and the European Commission set 66% as the minimum earnings replacement. Clearly, Canada is lagging well behind international standards and comparators.
Let’s make sure all political parties support Canadians of all ages to thrive
Now is the time to stop falling short of our collective caregiving responsibilities for too many of Canada’s kids. There’s a federal election on the horizon in 2025 – and it’s never too early to begin reminding political parties about their responsibility to stand up for infants (and their parents) with more inclusive and generous supports.
The parental leave remedies called for by UNICEF Canada and Gen Squeeze do come with a price tag – one we peg at about $6 billion annually. Before jumping to the conclusion that this is unaffordable, consider two things.
First, since most parents need to work, the alternative to improved and expanded parental leave is creating space for infants in child care settings. This option is both limited and expensive, given the low staff ratios required for high quality infant care. Ensuring parents can access and afford enough parental time at home with a newborn is a cost-effective way to promote quality early experiences for infants, as well as healthy child attachment.
Second, while $6 billion might sound like a lot, annual increases in Old Age Security (OAS) for seniors will soon reach $27 billion. Few questions are raised about the growth in OAS outpacing other program investments, or its contribution to driving deficits and squeezing out investments in younger people. A generationally fair Canada means supporting people of all ages to thrive, yet spending on child and family benefits ranked 25th across 38 countries in 2023, while Global Age Watch ranks Canada in the top five countries in which to grow old.
2025 is the time to put parental leave centre stage, and raise our expectations for elected leaders to invest fairly in all generations, from the early years onwards.
Andrea Long is Senior Director of Research and Knowledge Mobilization for Gen Squeeze. She has more than 20 years of experience in policy analysis, research and knowledge mobilization on health and social issues, including housing and homelessness, poverty, social determinants of health, and health in all policies.